The real problem in America

I received the following e-mail from Andy McQuitty this week. Andy is the pastor at Irving Bible Church and someone who has been a great support and encouragement to me in ministry.

Poverty has become a particularly hot topic in America in the aftermath of Katrina. Those searing images of thousands of poor folks wading away from their old lives in New Orleans in waist-deep water are etched on our minds and hearts. As some have pointed out, an unexpected consequence of the hurricanes was to place the poverty issue front and center in the national debate. And as you would expect, people have wildly different takes on both the causes and the solutions to the problem.

Some think American wealth is too narrowly pooled, and the answer is for more money to be invested on top of the trillions already spent on the war on poverty over the last five decades. Some think institutional racism holds people down, and the answer is quotas, set-asides, legislation and more affirmative action.

I'm no sociologist, but I suspect that the diagnosis and cure for the disease of poverty is far more complex than anyone wants to admit. And there's surely some truth in practically all the prominent analyses of the issue. What troubles me is that there's an elephant in the national room where this debate is being staged. Nobody seems to want to recognize his presence, but he's got peanuts on his breath and refuses to leave.

The elephant is this: we can talk about bigotry and wealth redistribution and affirmative action until we're blue in the face, but until we address the disintegration of the family, we'll get nowhere. In her article "Fatherhood Is More Than a Paycheck," Jane Jimenez wrote:

"From 1960 to 1995, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes tripled from 9 percent to 27 percent, and the proportion of children living with married parents declined. Today, 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father. And in 2000, 1.35 million births -- one-third of all births -- occurred out of wedlock.

Fathers are the missing ingredient for many children. The results of father absence are staggering. An analysis reported in 2001 of nearly 100 studies on parent-child relationships found that, in some studies, father love was actually a better predictor than mother love for certain outcomes, including delinquency, substance abuse and overall mental health and well-being."

You might wonder what this preponderance of single parent families (primarily led by women) in America has to do with poverty? Let me answer by quoting Robert Rector's article "How Not to Be Poor":

"Nationwide, children born and raised outside marriage are seven times more likely to live in poverty than are children in intact married families. Nearly two-thirds of all poor children live in single-parent families."

"If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, some 60 percent would be immediately raised out of poverty."

And then he writes: "A real war against poverty must be a campaign for moral renewal; its heart must be a long-term effort to rebuild marriage."

I think Robert Rector is right. I also think he's on to why we don't hear more of these kind of stat's about the poverty issue on the national stage-they're politically incorrect! The attitude is like this: "What, you think we need to trot out these quaint mid-Victorian notions of marriage and monogamy and faithfulness of both moms and dads to each other and to their kids? That just won't fly in our liberated twenty-first century ethos of "hooking up", "reproductive freedom", and moral license." Don't believe people think that way? Just ask Bill Cosby.

Well, it better fly, because if it doesn't, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better! I'm not saying that because I'm a pastor with an ax to grind. The only dog I have in this fight is the desire to recognize reality, because if we willfully miss a major component of poverty's cause, we'll definitely fail in bringing poverty's cure. I like what Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis: "Being a Christian is not cutting yourself off from real life; it is entering into it more fully. It is not failing to go deeper; it is going deeper than ever. It is a journey into the heart of how things really are."

So how are things, really? An honest look at the relationship between poverty and the family's disintegration tells us. It tells us that God's idea of loving and committed parents raising children together in the security of an intact home makes much better sense than everything else we are trying and that we better be at least as much about that as making new laws and throwing money around.

Now I'm fully aware that not all single-parent families are poor. I'm also deeply sympathetic to moms and dads who never wanted to be single and who fought valiantly if not successfully for their marriage. I believe that God has a special place in His heart for single parents who struggle to live faithful to Him and heroically to raise their children with love and values. The church needs to be there big-time for such moms and dads, encouraging and helping and blessing them. It's not these single parents who understand the importance of a child having positive input from both mom and dad and the security of their love for one another that I worry about. It's the ones who refuse to recognize the importance of marriage or commitment or values and what those mean to the well being of their children that give me the willies.

Once again, I'm reminded of the incredible responsibility we have as believers to both teach and live truth. Could an investment in my marriage actually be a blow struck against poverty in America? In isolation, probably not. But carried out in conjunction with hundreds of thousands of others in American churches who also pass their values to their children and grand-children and teach others as well, probably so. Who, if not the church, will mount the needed campaign for moral renewal? Who, if not the church, will commit to the long-term effort to rebuild marriage?

I say kudo's to those brave and lonely voices in our country who are calling for a renewed commitment to strong marriages and intact families in addressing the issue of poverty. May we as believers do our part as we keep tender, generous hearts open to meeting the needs of the poor even as we seek to promote long-term solutions.